Subscribe to this blog

follow by email

Capture the Colour: Photos Across the Spectrum in Morocco and Spain

Last week, I came across a lovely photo post by longtime Spain expat blogger Cassandra Gambill. But because she was entering the annual Capture the Colour photography contest (sponsored by the British website Travel Supermarket), her blog post showcased five pictures from her travels over the past few years in which the colors (spelled without a U, thank you very much!) yellow, red, green, white, and blue featured prominently. For whatever reason, I was hesitant to throw my hat in the ring until Cat Gaa of Sunshine and Siestas“tagged” me in her entry for the competition this morning. Guess I don’t have much of a choice now! Anyway, I hope y’all enjoy these photos.

Yellow: Petunias at the Patios de Córdoba festival

I first visited Córdoba back in dreary December and, while I did enjoy the city, every Spaniard I talked to about it insisted it was “worth the pain” (vale la pena) to go back in May for the Patios de Córdoba festival, a decades-old competition to see who can decorate their traditional Andalusian courtyard with spring flowers the best. Taking their advice, I returned with my friend Leigh and we explored three neighborhoods in town. House after house was literally overflowing with flower pots and planters, and I was amazed at the beauty and variety of flowers the homeowners had curated.

Red: Candles in the Church of Santa Maria del Mar, Barcelona

The first time I visited Barcelona was in a whirlwind layover on my way to Paris for Christmas break this year. Although I missed my night train (it’s a long story), I managed to enjoy a half-hour of calm amidst a day of go-go-go sightseeing at the Church of Santa Maria del Mar. This church is an austere yet beautiful Catalan Gothic structure built in the city’s touristy old town, but when you enter inside, you enter into a true place of peace: dim lighting accentuates the spacious naves while soft violin music plays quietly through the speakers. I took this picture of votive candles lit in one of the side chapels.

Green: Moroccan mint tea

Green tea + freshly picked spearmint leaves + a bushel of sugar = nectar of the gods. Green tea is a decent beverage, spearmint has a delightful fragrance on its own, and sugar needs no explanation, but when you put all three of them together the way Moroccans do, the flavor combination is unbelievable. It’s kind of like the first bursts of fresh, fruity flavor in bubblegum, only it never ends. I won’t say how many times (per day) I drank this stuff while in Morocco…but it was a lot.

White: Jewish cemetery of Fez, Morocco

Stumbling upon a vast Jewish cemetery is not something you’d expect to do in the westernmost outpost of the Arab world. But while touring northern Morocco this past March, that’s just what I did. In a quiet corner of the Fez medina you can find the old Jewish quarter—old because almost no Jews live there any longer. However, the centuries-old cemetery still reminds visitors of this part of town’s former residents with striking clarity. Thousands of these whitewashed, cylindrical humps undulate across the sunny tract of land and tell us of the diverse culture that Fez once enjoyed.

Blue: Chefchaouen, Morocco

Probably my favorite city I visited in Morocco was Chefchaouen, a village built on the side of a hill in the rugged northern Rif Mountains. It really enchanted me because virtually all houses and buildings in the medina or old town were painted in a rich, bright blue. This color scheme made the whole town feel like it was in a science fiction world, but there was this one house that brought me back down to earth. I took a picture of this entrance because it stood out from the rest of the medina as quite dilapidated, whereas most houses are sharp and cleanly-painted. Perhaps the ladder indicates there were plans to eventually spruce up the doorway.

Tag—you’re it!

Part of this photo challenge involves calling out five other bloggers who you think should put together an entry of their own. So I’m tagging them before running away at the end of this post!

* Ashley, because France
* Christine, because her photos of rainy northern Spain are a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
* Kaley, because she writes about Spain without rose-colored glasses
* Liz, because she has already done two color-themed posts on Córdoba and Istanbul
* Mike, because he knows how colorful Andalucía is in the spring, too

Tell me which picture is your favorite! (or least favorite, if you haven’t had your coffee yet this morning!)

Popular posts from this blog

If you’re like me, you’ve probably learned Spanish as it’s spoken throughout Latin America. Now, I know there is no one single standard Latin American accent, but there are a few things I’ve noticed when listening to Spaniards speak that distinguish them from Spanish speakers in, for example, Nicaragua or Argentina. Since living here for the greater part of a year, I’ve both consciously resisted and unconsciously picked up on many features of the typical Spanish accent. After thinking about it for a while, I’ve decided there are around five characteristics that most distinguish the Spanish of Spain from the Spanish of the Americas. These five sounds, when spoken in the Castilian way, will bring you much closer to sounding native.

1) Pronounce C before E & I and Z like TH
In the Americas you’ll hear the words ciudad (“city”), cereza (“cherry”), and zorro (“fox”) pronounced as “see-oo-DAHD” [sjuˈðað], “say-RAY-sah” [seˈɾe.sa], and “SOE-rroe” [ˈso.ro]. However, in Spain, you’ll pick …

Galician is a Romance language (i.e., from Latin) spoken by about 3 million people in Spain’s northwestern region of Galicia. Although it’s most closely related to Portuguese—which is spoken south of the border—it shares many similarities with Castilian Spanish, including sounds and spelling.

If you’re planning on spending any time traveling or living in this unique corner of Spain, or walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route that ends here, even a tiny knowledge of Galician will help you get around and navigate menus, maps, etc. If you happen to speak Spanish, you’re already 80% of the way to understanding Galician, and I’m serious! Getting a grasp on the grammatical and phonological differences will turbo boost you up to 90%.

Confession: I never read the Harry Potter series growing up—even though I came of age as J. K. Rowling was poppin’ one book out after another. Part of it was because my parents didn’t let me read the books (yet The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was fine? hmm…) but another part was my inner hipster mindset that wouldn’t let me deign to read mass-produced fiction. I soon came to my senses and ultimately read the entire series during my first school year working as a language assistant in Spain, and I even signed up for Pottermore.com and got placed in Gryffindor house, thankyouverymuch.

Now a fan of the Harry Potter books and movies, I was convinced to visit Portugal’s second-biggest city, Porto, over Easter break not only because everyone I talked to raved about the city but also because of its intimate connection with Rowling herself. Pronounced “POR-too” [ˈpoɾ.tu] (NOT “poor toe,” ahem), this city was home to the author between 1991 and 1993. Writing Harry Potter and the Sorceror…